🥚 Stat of the Day: The Waffle House Index may be more helpful than just for gauging how bad storms are. Yesterday, the restaurant that (almost) never closes announced a temporary $0.50/egg surcharge on all customers’ orders, citing ongoing egg shortages and rising prices.

• Grocery stores and restaurants are now paying ~$7.79 for a dozen Midwest large eggs, the industry standard, up from $3.33 a year ago, per egg tracking firm Expana.
• The Agriculture Department predicts prices will rise another 20% this year.

Behind this eggonomic recession? An outbreak of the bird flu. The disease first began spreading widely among chickens in 2022 but experienced a resurgence late last year, leading to the deaths of 20+ million egg-laying chickens in the US in Q4 2024 – the worst toll inflicted on America's egg supply since the outbreak began..

🤔 Did You Know? People with depression tend to literally see the world as duller and grayer than others, due to reduced contrast sensitivity in their eyes – or a lower ability to distinguish an object from its background.

📰 Worth a Read: Searching for ‘Dark Oxygen’ in One of the World’s Deepest Mines → (Atlas Obscura)